8 Reasons Why Fans And Critics Can’t Agree On Superhero Films

8. Comic Books On Screen Is Not Enough For Everyone

A major defence of Batman V Superman and X-Men: Apocalypse is that they're bringing so much cool comic book stuff to the screen that you can just sit back and enjoy that if nothing else. Everyone points towards the parademons, mainly because it's what Kevin Smith highlighted in his conflictedly gushing fan review, but it's true of things like the Phoenix Force or dead Robin too; these are weighty pieces of source iconography that it is admittedly cool to see on the big screen.

There's the added thrill of accuracy with these. Even though superhero movies have been big for almost two decades now, faithfulness has never been a top priority. Nobody got by on just having Deadpool by name only in Origins: Wolverine or appreciated Venom in Spider-Man 3.

But while they look like the things you enjoy, these appearances aren't all that special within the movies themselves; they're moments that can be said to mean an awful lot if you know the context, but their place in the story isn't all that justified. From a filmmaking perspective, it falls flat. It's not that critics don't appreciate Wonder Woman on screen, it's that they don't feel it justified in the film. Conversely, when T'Challa turns up in Civil War, he's not cool because he's Black Panther, but because the movie's made Black Panther cool.

And so there goes one of the biggest points of praise of these movies from comic book fans. On a basic level, the two groups want slightly different things.

A notable exception to this is Spider-Man: Civil War plays heavily with his iconography, using the "QUEENS" location card to great effect, but even then the film does a solid job of justifying him beyond simply saying the name.